Bette Midler tweets her #MeToo story of Geraldo Rivera allegedly groping her in the 1970s. Las Vegas Blog

Bette Midler has tweeted a video of an interview she did with Barbara Walters in 1991 in which she asserted journalist Geraldo Rivera groped her in the 1970s. The- video resurfaced today, a day after Rivera, now a Fox News reporter, defended Matt Lauer after he was fired as a “Today” show co-host over allegations of sexual misconduct. “Tomorrow is my birthday,” Midler wrote on Twitter. “I feel like this video was a gift from the universe to me. Geraldo may have apologized for his tweets supporting Matt Lauer, yet he has yet to apologize for this.” Midler concluded the tweet with a #MeToo hashtag, which has become synonymous with speaking out against sexual harassment and abuse. In the interview, Midler tells Walters, “Geraldo and his producer came to do an interview with me, in the ’70s, the early ’70s. And this was when he was very, sort of, hot. And he and his producer left the crew in the other room. They pushed me in to my bathroom. They broke two poppers and pushed them under my nose and proceeded to grope me.” “Poppers” is slang for the recreational drug alkyl nitrite. “Grope?” Walters asks, looking surprised. Midler responds, “Groped me. I did not bid myself up on the altar of Geraldo Rivera. He was … he was unseemly.” A representative for Midler told ABC News in that she had no further comment beyond her tweet. Rivera’s representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News. In a review of his 1991 memoir, “Exposing Myself,” The- Washington Post quoted a line from the book, in which he said, “We were in the bathroom, preparing for the interview, and at some point I put my hands on her breasts.” Recently, Rivera came under fire after he called the news business “flirty” in the wake of Lauer’s ouster over sexual misconduct allegations. “If News wasn’t (formerly) a flirty biz then how do we explain so many newsroom courtships in that have led to pleased marriages?” he tweeted. In response to his comments, Fox News issued a acknowledgment saying, “Geraldo’s tweets do not reflect the views of Fox News or its management. We were troubled by his comments and are addressing them with him.” Rivera after apologized. “Reaction to my tweets today on #sexharassment makes clear I didn’t sufficiently explain in that this is a horrendous issue long hidden,” he wrote. Lauer moreover issued an apology today, saying “some of the allegations are “untrue or mischaracterized” yet “there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”